


fast and free

by TerrificMango



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: AU, Character Study, Gen, Ice Skating, figure skating, figure skating AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-13 19:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17493701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrificMango/pseuds/TerrificMango
Summary: Long before she became Spiderwoman, Gwen Stacy already knew how to fly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I should be writing this kid was going to be the death of him, but instead I wrote this lmao
> 
> Anyway, I'm a figure skater and since part of Gwen's whole gig is that she's graceful because she's a dancer, and ballet and figure skating are linked together a lot, I thought it would be interesting if she was a figure skater instead. So I wrote this very self indulgent thing that's basically just 90% me projecting on her ahaha

Long before she became Spiderwoman, Gwen Stacy already knew how to fly.

Set up the entry, get onto the takeoff edge. Bend your knees, get your arms into position. Dig your toepick into the ice. Take off. And for a second, fly.

In a moment, she’ll have to start unfolding from her air position in preparation to extend her free leg as she lands. The jump will come to an end. But for that one split second, she’s high above the ice, soaring through the air. She’s free. 

Since becoming Spiderwoman, Gwen supposes she knows a bit more about what flying feels like (or one form of it, at least), but there’s still nothing that compares to the feeling of bending into the edge on a Lutz, the  _ snap  _ into the jump, the ruthless speed of rotation, and then the solid impact of her blades meeting the ice again. Nothing that compares to the satisfaction and the feeling of  _ rightness _ when she pulls off a jump perfectly.

She whips into a spin and the G-forces pull on every part of her, making it almost hard to breathe, but she fights to pull inward anyway and feels herself going faster and faster, everything blurring and racing around her. It’s wild and it’s powerful and it feels like tricking nature into letting her do something that shouldn’t be possible, and as she pulls out she thinks that nothing else on the planet feels quite like this. Not even webslinging.

Because long before she became Spiderwoman, Gwen Stacy was already a figure skater.

* * *

 

Gwen steps out onto the newly resurfaced ice and sighs in relief, because it’s been a long day and  _ ugh _ does it feel good. She goes into her warmup routine and can feel the tiredness leaching out, flowing away into the ice. 

Outside, between real life and being Spiderwoman, things are confusing and complicated, but once she gets inside the rink it all falls away. Here, she knows that if she works hard on a skill, it’ll improve, and that each jump and spin comes down to her and her alone. Here, at least, she knows exactly where she stands.

She pins back her hair as she draws up a plan for practice in her head, how much time she wants to devote to each skill. She heads into the first item on her agenda and reminds herself of her coach’s comments in her last session, hanging like sticky notes in the back of her head.

There’s a strangely meditative quality to practicing alone. No coach, no one to talk to (the other people at her rink like to mess around a lot, but she doesn’t interact with them very much), just her repeating the same skills over and over for a long while. There isn’t really space to think about things outside of skating, so she doesn’t. It’s just her and the ice.

(She loves it when it’s  _ really  _ just her and the ice, when she comes at just the right time to be the only person in the rink. There’s no talking, no program music playing over the speakers, just the sound of her own blades rustling across the ice, the  _ ripp _ ing noise of edges echoing sharply off the walls. She pulls into a spin and the sound it makes is all she can hear. It’s like she’s alone in the world- nothing but herself and her skates- and it’s magical.)

* * *

 

Bruises. So many bruises, on her knees, her hips, her sides. They’re layered on top of each other, each one barely given time to heal before she falls on yet another jump and a new one forms over it. Falling, unfortunately, is unavoidable in figure skating.

She hisses in pain as she gingerly picks herself back up, brushing the snow off of her clothes. She gives herself a moment to regroup and then is off again, settling back into the entry to her triple loop one more time. 

This jump feels good in the air, and for a second when she lands she thinks she’s finally got it, when her blade suddenly slips out from under her. She ends up crashing sideways into the ice that feels as hard as concrete.  _ And that’s another bruise. _

God, this session has been brutal.

She pushes herself up and just stares down at the ice, breathing in and out.  _ Trust the process,  _ she reminds herself. And again she picks herself up, cleans herself off, and heads into another triple loop.

Because no matter how many times she falls, she always gets back up.

So she keeps going even when her whole body is sore from exertion and from falling so many times, because the only way to get better at anything is through practice, because figure skating is a sport that’s full to the brim of hard falls and the only way to learn a skill is to fall over and over until eventually she  _ stops _ falling. By the end of the session her feet are hurting like hell, but she grits her teeth because she just needs 15 more minutes to drill this one skill. Afterward, when she takes her skates off, her feet are red and swollen, but that’s so normal at this point that it doesn’t really matter. 

People ask her,  _ don’t you get dizzy? _ , and she answers  _ I get used to it _ , because that’s the simple truth. Figure skaters don’t spot like they do in ballet, don’t have any fancy trick. You just have to spin so many times that eventually it doesn’t affect you anymore, and it barely affects Gwen now- or if it does, she can ignore it.

And when she leaves the rink, it doesn’t end. Day by day she bounces around between ballet for flexibility, conditioning for stamina, full body workouts for strength, and then off ice jumps and rotation exercises besides, because figure skating is a grueling full body sport that seems to require everything. She ignores the cronies at school who say that figure skating isn’t a sport because what do they know? (The answer is nothing.)

One more. She always needs just  _ one  _ more of this or that skill, one more shot at getting it perfect. If it turns out badly, she chides herself with  _ oh, you can do better than that _ , and if it turns out well, she’ll think  _ let me try and replicate that again _ . No matter which happens, the outcome is always that she needs one more- no matter how much her body is aching or how long it’s been since she first started repeating  _ one more _ to herself.

At the end of the session, when she’s the only person left on the ice, it’s still  _ one more _ . She swears if she does it just one more time then she’ll be satisfied and she’ll leave, but the rink clock is saying the session is over and the staff are giving her weird looks but she just needs one more,  _ one more- _

* * *

_ You have a good head for competition,  _ her coach tells her. Gwen is consistent, can be counted on to give a good performance when some of the other girls at the rink bomb due to nerves. Gwen supposes it’s a side effect of being Spiderwoman and getting in life or death situations on the regular, although it’s not like she was completely inconsistent before she got her powers either.

But then the year she becomes a novice, Gwen manages to get fourth place at regionals. And that’s never happened before. And that means that she can go to sectionals, where if she places in the top 4 she could go to  _ nationals. _

It’s heady to even think about. And Gwen wants to go to nationals, wants it with every fiber in her being. 

So she buckles down, practices more and more, and when the day of the competition finally comes, Gwen is nervous before her short program but she does well. Not perfectly, but well. She ends up sitting in 7th, a decent place to be, and it’s close enough to break into the top 4 if she’s perfectly clean in her free skate. 

_ This is her shot _ , she thinks.

But then the day of the free skate dawns and Gwen feels more nervous than she thinks she ever has before. Because she has the chance to go to nationals, but only if she gets absolutely everything right, and the words  _ this is my shot, my shot,  _ **_my shot_ ** keep pounding in her head like an unending drumbeat. It gets bad enough that her coach puts her hand on her shoulder and asks her if she’s okay, because even she can tell something’s wrong.

Gwen pastes on a smile and tells her it’s fine, because she’s Spiderwoman and she’s used to that.

But it’s not fine, and she can hear the blood thundering through her head as they call her name, as she skates out to center ice-

And she’s Spiderwoman and she has nerves of steel and she has faced down people trying to end the world without flinching, but that doesn’t stop her mind from going terrifyingly blank as she barrels down the ice into her first jump. The moment she picks she knows that the jump is all wrong and she’s going to fall.

So she falls.

And then she falls again.

And again.

She steps off the ice and her coach says _ It’s okay, nobody’s consistent 100% of the time. Take some time off, we can talk about this tomorrow. _

So Gwen goes home and before she knows it she’s Spiderwoman, rocketing between buildings, her webslinging fast and reckless, the web strands cutting angry lines into her wrists and yanking so hard that she thinks she’s going to dislocate her shoulder, super durability or no- 

She lands on the roof of some building at the outskirts of the city and just stares at the skyline as she waits for her heart rate to slowly return to normal. As the sky starts to slowly fade into night, she takes a deep breath and stands back up. Keeps going. 

She races aimlessly through the city streets, going nowhere, turning as she feels like it. It’s not as violent as before, but it’s still fast enough that the cold wind bites sharply into her and she can’t pause to think or else she’ll fall. She stops keeping track of time, losing herself in the repetitive motion of shoot, release, shoot, release.

It’s hours later when she finally swings back home. She’s panting and every inch of her body is sore, but at least she’s not thinking anymore.

* * *

And it works in reverse too. A fight with the Green Goblin ends in huge collateral damage, people injured and dead, homes and buildings destroyed-

She goes home and strips off her costume and heads to the rink, and she sets herself up for a flip and  _ slams  _ her toepick into the ice as she throws herself into the jump-

And it doesn’t work, obviously, picking that hard is bad technique and throwing yourself into the jump just makes you lose control, because there’s got to be a balance and if you do those sorts of things you’re just going to fall, so of course she falls. She just lies there on the ice for a second, feeling the penetrating cold seeping through her jacket.

Finally she gets back up and sighs, and then she turns and whips into a spin, powerful and furious. She holds it for as long as she dares, even after it starts to get unsteady, because there’s no space to think in the middle of a spin, you just have to focus on the moment. She runs through her step sequences and can feel the sharp bite of her blades in the ice surface, digging them in and  _ pushing _ into the rhythm as she strains to get just that bit more of power and speed, her skates raking deep lines into the ice. She does random jumps and adds arbitrary combos to them, tacking on more and more jumps until she finally falls. 

She skates and skates and skates until long after her toes have gone numb and her fingers have become stiff and the soles of her feet have started aching like hell. Until she starts to feel all the hurt and tiredness leach out into the ice, until she’s. Not happy, but at least not angry. 

(Because the ice may be cold and unforgiving but it also doesn’t expect anything of her, doesn’t throw all her mistakes in her face.)

* * *

Gwen closes her eyes, leaning over the boards at the side of the rink as the music starts to play over her headphones. Her skates twitch over the ice beneath her in anticipation as the melody settles over her.

It could work. It could definitely work.

She can see in her mind’s eye how the choreography will go- the opening pose, an Ina Bauer here, a jump timed right on the music there. The music will definitely work as a program.

The documentary came out a few years back-  _ Spiderwoman _ , about the history of Spiderwoman and the differing opinions of her from the public. Honestly, it had kind of sucked (or at least in her opinion), but it had had some good background music. 

Gwen had always idly thought about skating to some of the music from the documentary, so before the start of her second season novice she digs it out again and listens to it. Hearing it again, she knows it could make a good program, and she supposes it’s as good a time as any.

She picks out the individual scores carefully- first something  [ dramatic ](https://youtu.be/f865NNNiZgA) , then  [ emotional ](https://youtu.be/mFeLdzsKPE4) , then  [ dramatic ](https://youtu.be/qk2oNt9nvLA) again. They’ll have to cut them down a bit so that they can all fit into the right timeframe, of course, but for the moment this works. She shows it to her coach and the first thing her coach does after listening is raise her eyebrows. “This is pretty big music. Are you sure you can sell it?”

Gwen can’t really explain why she knows she can sell it, so she just says “Yes.”

Because- the documentary might have sucked, and a lot of it might have been biased or inaccurate, but the music at least got it right. As the chords wash over her, she can see a thousand different memories written on the back of her eyelids, and she can’t help but think that if nothing else in that movie was accurate, at least this music fits who she, who Spiderwoman is.

(This season is another chance to try to get to nationals. She’s never tried to bring  _ this  _ into skating before, and she can’t say she’s not hoping it’ll give her a little bit more strength, somehow. Make her feel a little more powerful.)

She doesn’t intend to choreograph it herself; she’s never done that before. But she’s always loved to just move and let the music flow through her in her skating, and that’s multiplied tenfold with this music, where every note seems to be pulled straight out of her heart. She adds one move, then another, and before she knows it the entire program is complete. Her coach seems surprised by it, but she doesn’t question it.

So then it’s just her and this program that’s about herself. She practices it endlessly, until she knows each note inside out, each gesture and expression and look at the judges, trying to channel this strong and confident figure that she knows is really herself but that feels so far away sometimes. Because skating can be unpredictable in ways that heroing isn’t, because this is her free skate and that’s the place where she messed up last year. 

Regionals comes. Her program attracts some attention- Spiderwoman is still a polarizing figure, after all- but it doesn’t matter because she comes in third, and that means she wins her ticket up to sectionals again. 

The month leading up to sectionals passes in a blur of constant training and tightly controlled (or at least, that’s what she’s telling herself) nerves. So much so that it feels as if she barely blinks after regionals and then suddenly she’s walking into the rink for her short program, her competition warmup playlist ringing in her ears. 

Her coach squeezes her shoulder tightly before sending her out onto the ice. Gwen’s stomach is twisting itself into knots, but she manages to keep a tight enough grip on all of it that she’s able to stand up on everything. At the end of it all she’s hanging onto 6th, and just like last year that’s close enough to climb to fourth if she does well in the free.

Because maybe she did well in the short program, but the real battle, the place where she always messes up, is in the free.

She spends the afternoon after the short pacing around her hotel room and going to her allotted practice sessions, which are decent but not perfect, and most definitely not enough to quell her nerves. When she wakes up the next morning, she just stares at the ceiling for a while, feeling like she can hear the start of another drumbeat in the back of her head. She pushes it away.

She walks into the rink and keeps her eyes on the ground, deliberately avoiding looking at any of her competitors. They’re looking at her, she knows- her costume is a near replica of Spiderwoman’s, with a little more bling, of course. She plays her program music over her headphones as she warms up, rehearsing over it one last time.

“You’ve got this, Gwen,” her coach says to her as Gwen stands rinkside, seconds ticking down to when they’ll call her name and she’ll have to go out. She’s the last to skate. Her coach grips her hands and stares right into her eyes, brows furrowed, probably searching for any sign that Gwen is going to break down like she did last year.

Gwen nods. She opens her mouth to say something, and that’s right when they call her name. Gwen skates out to center ice, leaving whatever it would have been unsaid.

She takes her opening pose- legs crossed, back straight, one toepick in the ice. Staring right at the judges. She locks eyes with the judge directly in front of her and keeps them there. She imagines pulling the mask down over her face and the hood over her head, that this costume is the real deal. She imagines becoming Spiderwoman, that person who always feels more powerful than Gwen Stacy.

The music begins, heavy and ominous, and she pushes forward, never breaking eye contact with her judge. Then the drums begin and she turns away, spinning off into the beginning of her program.

She- Spiderwoman is on the warpath. That’s what this first part is. This is her, breaking into a secret lab, chasing down a police alert, on her way to confront a villain. Strong. Purposeful. Confident. Every movement is sharp and powerful. She’s about to get a fight and she’s ready for it.

She sets up the entry for her first jumping pass- a combo, triple flip double toe- and that heady feeling of confidence gets quickly undercut by tension as she gets closer and closer to the jump. She picks in the ice, vaults into the air, and-

She falls.

She hits the ice and panic shoots through her at the same time that the cold does, because that was a missed combo and that means she has to tack a toe loop onto her next jump, along with a million other feelings racing through her head that her brain doesn’t have the time to construct thoughts for. In a second she’s back up and that confident music is still blaring, she has to continue the performance like nothing happened.

The next jump is coming up. She has to add a double toe to the back of her triple loop. Her side is still sore and still cold and she needs to add a jump when she just fell but this music full of power is ringing in her ears, and it’s okay because- because-

She bends back into a layback Ina Bauer, the jump is coming closer and closer-

No matter how many times she falls-  _ she hits the ice and panic shoots through her, nobody’s consistent 100% of the time, this session has been brutal, full to the brim of hard falls, the ice that feels as hard as concrete- _

She comes out of the Ina Bauer and pushes to get more speed-

_ She- _

She’s on the preceding steps now, racing down the rink-

_ gets- _

Consecutive three turns, prerotations, get ready-

_ back- _

Right back outside edge and her arms are in position, her legs bent in preparation to spring upward-

_ -up. _

She takes off and she’s up in the air. She lands and bends into the impact, reloads, reaches back, vaults up into her double toe. Lands.

It’s steady and clean as a whistle. As perfect a jumping pass as she’s ever done. From the boards, Gwen can hear her coach whooping. Gwen smiles, puts her mask back on, and keeps going.

The rest of the program isn’t perfect, because things very rarely are. There’s some bobbles here and there, she has to put her free leg down quickly on some, but she doesn’t stop. 

The first music section ends with a flourish, and it moves into the more quiet, emotional part. Here, Gwen sees all the people she couldn’t save, all the mistakes she’s made and all the damage she’s caused. The music rises to a sharp point and Gwen reaches out, as if trying to pull something back that’s already gone. Her heart feels heavy as she enters into a spin.

As she exits it, the second cut of music slowly fades out, and then the third one bursts in. This one is aggressive and loud, the contrast striking. Unlike the first section, this isn’t her on her way to a fight- it’s her right in the middle of one, with sheer adrenaline pumping through her veins. Energy is harder to muster up at the end of a program, and her legs are so, so sore, but she still manages to grin and puts all of her effort into selling it.

This program, from beginning to end, is  _ her _ \- it’s who she is, who Spiderwoman is. It’s all the pain and euphoria and everything in between, all the the things she could never tell anyone about or even say in words, expressed here, through skating. It’s her story, her truth.

As she comes to the end of her step sequence, it all starts to really hit her. She’s here, having done a- not perfect (but it doesn’t have to be) but a good free skate, and she did it with a program about herself and who she is as Spiderwoman.  _ I might really be doing this _ .

She grins through her final spin and hits her ending pose, half kneeling on the ice and bent backward. She just holds that position for a few seconds, panting and listening to the audience clap.

(She knows she sold it, utterly and completely- judging by the strange looks from some of the audience, maybe a little too much. But it doesn’t matter.)

When Gwen gets off the ice, her coach gives her a hug. “That was amazing, Gwen. You should be so proud of that performance,” her coach says.

Gwen laughs, breathless in the normal way but also in the way you are when the thing you were so nervous about is finally over and and the anxiety is still draining out of your system. “When I fell on the first jump, I was so panicked.”

“But you  _ came back _ , Gwen,” her coach says. “That’s what’s important. You didn’t collapse or break down, you didn’t let the rest of the program fall apart. You fell, but you came back.”

Gwen just gulps down air and laughs a bit more, nodding. The thrill of what she’s done is starting to flood through her in full force, but it’s still tempered just the tiniest bit- she knows she can’t celebrate just yet, not until she knows the scores.

They sit down in the kiss and cry, make small talk, discuss her performance, all the while Gwen’s foot is tapping anxiously. The judges seem to be taking their sweet time with the scores, and Gwen’s breathing has finally gone back to normal when the loudspeaker turns on and her head snaps up.

“Gwen Stacy.” Gwen is frozen, gripping the seat beneath her. “Free skate score: 86.52. Total score: 129.46.”

“She is currently in third place.”

Gwen claps a hand over her open mouth. Next to her, her coach is hugging and shaking her, and all Gwen can think is that she did it. She took her shot.

She’s going to nationals. She’s going to  _ nationals.  _

She feels like she can see a million different memories passing in front of her eyes, every exhausting day of practice and every hard-won skill all leading her up to this moment. Figure skating is a sport that’s full to the brim of hard falls, but no matter what, Gwen has always gotten back up. And in this moment, it’s all worth it.

And whether it’s Gwen or it’s Spiderwoman getting back up, it’s always been worth it.


	2. epilogue

**w-oof:** hey guys, I finally have time to watch US nats! who should I check out in novice ladies?

**volaatile:** uhhh alysa liu definitely, all of the medalists were good really

**volaatile:** and gwen stacy’s free. if nothing else, definitely watch her free

**w-oof:** gwen stacy??

**wonder-cho:** spiderwoman girl?

**love ❤️ guru:** spiderwoman???

**w-oof:** I don’t feel like I’ve heard of her before

**volaatile:** yeah it’s her first year at nats and she finished seventh iirc

**lessbeesand:** how have you not heard of her?? my twitter timeline has been blowing up about her

**love ❤️ guru:** wait why

**love ❤️ guru:** I don’t watch novice someone fill me in

**volaatile:** she skated to music from that spiderwoman documentary from a few years ago, and she went, like, full frontal on the spiderwoman thing

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** ooh gutsy

**lessbeesand:** her costume was basically spiderwoman’s but with a bunch of crystals and it gave me life

**volaatile:** her program was really something else, like it gave me chills

**wonder-cho:** yeah it was amazing

**w-oof:** oh shit guess I gotta watch it now

**nashi:** I don’t remember, has anyone done a program themed around spiderwoman before?

**volaatile:** nope

**lessbeesand:** definitely not, too controversial

**wonder-cho:** cause she’s a “””menace””” and all

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** wow I gotta get in on this

**wonder-cho:** I know right

**love ❤️ guru:** jesus you’re right bees, fs twitter is going insane over this lmao

**love ❤️ guru:** And there’s even some news articles about her and this program. I wasn’t paying attention

**w-oof:** her costume is so, so valid

**volaatile:** wait are you watching it??

**wonder-cho:** wait wait wait let’s rabbit it, I wanna see y’all’s reactions

**w-oof:** k

**nashi:** @unknown get over here, I know how much you liked her program

**unknown:** :O!!! spiderwoman girl!

**volaatile:** I’ll call jumps

**love ❤️ guru:** is everyone on??

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** wow rabbit hates me. fuck my life

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** nvm got it

**nashi:** yesss

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** dude I would die to have that costume

**love ❤️ guru:** petition to have spiderwoman start wearing this as her actual costume

**wonder-cho:** wow seconded

**w-oof:** that’s an intense stare in her opening pose there

**love ❤️ guru:** oh this is pretty heavy music

**unknown:** intense straight out of the gate

**nashi:** facial expression is on point

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** yeah she’s really getting into this

**volaatile:** triple flip, double toe

**w-oof:** she gets good height

**lessbeesand:** watching this again, her ss could use some work but I like her speed

**love ❤️ guru:** she’s REALLY getting into this

**nashi:** big drama

**wonder-cho:** her ina bauer is lovely

**volaatile:** triple loop, fall

**love ❤️ guru:** ouch

**unknown:** oof, that was a hard fall

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** her spins are nice

**w-oof:** oh. that’s a music change

**wonder-cho:** she seems so mournful

**volaatile:** she really embodies the music without over-acting, and that’s something you don’t see a lot in novice

**unknown:** and especially crazy given this source material

**volaatile:** double axel, single loop, triple salchow (underrotated)- just barely held

**love ❤️ guru:** why am I suddenly crying

**love ❤️ guru:** her musicality in this is just something else

**nashi:** she has a really nice free leg in her layback

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** end of the emotional part, straight back into the spiderwoman antics lol

**w-oof:** damn this song is a jam lol

**volaatile:** triple lutz

**unknown:** how she has this much energy this late in her program, I have no idea

**wonder-cho:** love the smile

**wonder-cho:** her energy is infectious

**love ❤️ guru:** this is a rockin step sequence

**volaatile:** triple flip, double toe

**volaatile:** double axel

**lessbeesand:** last jump!! she seemed really happy to be done with her jumps lol

**nashi:** ends right on the music, noice

**love ❤️ guru:** that was...an experience

**unknown:** I KNOW RIGHT???

**w-oof:** like dude, if you had told me a person would skate to spiderwoman music and sell it I would have just laughed

**w-oof:** skating is one thing but selling that big of a music piece with that kind of context? incredible

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** she was so in character throughout the entire thing

**lessbeesand:** yeah like how on earth do you portray spiderwoman, of all people??? except she DID IT

**volaatile:** maybe a little too well.

**nashi:** ...what’s that supposed to mean?

**volaatile:** idk, it just feels like she embodied the music, like, weirdly well. Especially that middle emotional part. I have no idea how I’d portray Spiderwoman if I had to do it, but she seems almost like she has a personal connection to Spiderwoman

**volaatile:** to be able to act as Spiderwoman that well

**unknown:** so what, you think she’s spiderwoman??

**volaatile:** what no I’m not saying THAT

**volaatile:** just maybe she knows spiderwoman or has talked to her. spiderwoman’s gotta have family or friends who know, right? maybe one of them

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** she could be spiderwoman though. 

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** she’s the right age.

**wonder-cho:** 🤔

**lessbeesand:** wait let me look something up

**love ❤️ guru:** mhm?

**lessbeesand:** OH SHIT

**lessbeesand:** SHE’S ACTUALLY FROM NEW YORK

**wonder-cho:** 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

**nashi:** oh my god

**love ❤️ guru:** #confirmed

**volaatile:** do you guys. seriously think that gwen stacy, 7th place at novice nationals, is Spiderwoman?

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** do you have evidence to the contrary?

**volaatile:** i 

**volaatile:** you guys are conspiracy theorists, is what you are

**love ❤️ guru:** you say that like it’s an insult :(

**volaatile:** that’s because it is

**love ❤️ guru:** :(((

**unknown:** okay there aren’t any interviews with gwen up, but she talks a bit in the kiss and cry in her short and comparing that to interviews with spiderwoman it just miiiiight be the same voice 

**wonder-cho:** link??

**unknown:** [ https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ ](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ) and  [ https://youtu.be/2INpDCWOy0Q ](https://youtu.be/2INpDCWOy0Q)

**lessbeesand:** okay. call me crazy, but I think those are the same voice. 

**nashi:** duuude it’s also like, why she specifically would have the bravery to do a spiderwoman program when no one had ever done before. It all checks out

**volaatile:** you guys really are crazy. I’m leaving

**wonder-cho:** pssh nonbeliever

**lessbeesand:** I swear to god, I bet that Gwen Stacy really is Spiderwoman. I just know she is. I just can’t prove it yet

**love ❤️ guru:** you can’t deny the evidence

**doNOTpicksomethingyouwillregret:** THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

**volaatile:** suuuuuuuure.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t put how Gwen did at nationals into the original story and I thought it would be funny if people started suspecting her identity from it, lol. I know Alysa Liu isn’t a novice anymore (and just won nationals, woo!) but uh I wrote this before that happened so I’m just gonna leave it in
> 
> thanks for reading y’all

**Author's Note:**

> So I skate, but I don't compete at a high level and am nowhere near where Gwen is, so if there are any inconsistencies please tell me so I can try to fix them! True to form, I literally started writing this in my head in the middle of a practice session and had to get off the ice to jot all my ideas down really quickly lmao
> 
> The title comes from a quote from Karen Chen's autobiography: "That day I skated dumb. I didn't skate perfectly or even completely clean, but I skated the way I like to- fast and free." Karen's a huge inspiration of mine so you could probably actually see a lot of similarities between this fic and her book if you were so inclined- most notably the "just one more" thing.
> 
> Also, I was thinking for a while about what Gwen's skating style would be like (because I'm a nerd and I do that for nearly every fictional character I see) and I feel like she would have a lot of elegance and grace, but also a sort of intensity and presence that lends itself well to dramatic music. Like the recent stuff from [Evgenia Medvedeva](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LInIXeM0tQ) and [Alena Kostornaia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMw4rLO7sD8) . What do y'all think?
> 
> My main tumblr: cynicalwindmill  
> My writing tumblr: cynicalwrites


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